Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/23

 17 profit of the master,

power, which

and constituting

simply to compel

is

its

ever-present motive

the labor

of fellow-men withoul

wages 1 If the offense of Slavery were less extended fined to

some narrow region



if it

had

less

by



if it

were con-

of grandeur in

its

and hundreds, instead of millions, the five-headed enormity would find little indulgence. All would rise against it, while religion and civilization would lavish their choicest efforts in the general warBut what is wrong, when done to one man, can not be fare. If it is wrong thus to degrade a right when done to many. if it is wrong thus to degrade you, Mr. President single soul And yet this it can not be right to degrade a whole race. proportions

victims were counted

if its



tens

—

—

denied by the barbarous logic of Slavery, which, taking adits own wrong, claims immunity because its usurpa-

is

vantage of

assumed a front of audacity that can not be safely atUnhappily, there is Barbarism elsewhere in the world but American Slavery, as defined by existing law, stands forth as the greatest organized Barbarism on which the sun now tion has

tacked.

shines.



It is

broke the

it,

without a single peer.

Its author, after

die.

If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law

making

— and here —

I

we shall approach a topic often considered in this Chamber It is not derived from the comconfess again its Barbarism. mon law, that fountain of Liberty for this law, while unhap;

pily recognizing a system of servitude

known

as villeinage, se-

cured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave; protected his person against mayhem; protected his wife against rape gave to his marriage equal validity with the marriage of his master, and surrounded his offspring with generous presumptions of Freedom, unlike that rule of yours by

which the servitude of the mother is necessarily stamped upon the child. It is not derived from the Eoman law, that fountain of tyranny, for two reasons first, because this law, in its better like the common law days, when its early rigors were spent

— unknown the — secured the bondman rescued him from of American slave — master — prevented the separation of parents and — and even protected him the of brothers and itself

privileges

to

in certain cases

children,

his

sisters

also

marriage relation

to

cruelty,



in

and secondly, because the Thirteen Colonies